Category Archives: 2013

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I need my nights back so I can write. Somehow it’s 2013 already. AJ and I just got back from Utah where my friends rented a house and went skiing. AJ and I just hung out. One day we explored main street in Park City, found a book shop named Atticus. I feel even closer to him, a special bond and special memory created for us, even while he is so young. Six months. He’s clapping his hands and sitting up and eating solids and soon he will be on the move. His blue eyes get brighter each day and remind me of why I fell in love with his father. There’s a spark there.

Some days it’s so hard being a mom. I’m sick — cold/cough/body aches/chills. I can barely keep it together. To survive, I let Noah watch too much TV. At one point today, AJ was napping and I was sitting on the couch with Noah, while he was watching TV and he was pulling my hair as he does for comfort and I snapped and said, “Noah, that fucking hurts.”

I didn’t react because I didn’t want him to realize I said a bad word. But I hated myself in that moment. I hated myself a lot today. My short temper with Noah.

A good day @ work. Why did I have you read 1984, I ask 4th period. One of my students answers, “Because it’s like life, society, why we do the things we do without questioning them.” Yes! Yes! The b.s. of life. In those 10 minutes today, I had them — most of them. They got it — the bigger picture. To think past Big Brother and really dig into the deeper meaning. The things in life that control us — the machine. “Society.” The pressure. Why I felt the urge to get married and have kids — why I wish I didn’t. What’s it all for anyway? Everything in that book is so relevant Orwell was a genius. Truly. To have his mind, to have known it. How great literature stands the test of time.

Sometimes my job feels important and relevant — like I really do make an impact on young minds. The way they see the world, the way they will see it — or might.

January half over with. Always a good thing. Cold & depressing. Winter in Chitown.

Read some strong 1984 essays by my students. Makes me happy I taught the book even though it was painful at times.

Thinking about the machine again lately, wondering how I got myself here. Wondering what’s the way out. Read about this man & his wife & his 4-year-old son who sold everything and are traveling and living out of their RV. I’m so jealous. To drop out like that. I don’t think I could do it. Dropping out now is almost impossible — mortgage, healthcare, kids, school. What I did @ 22 was different — to have that time back! I wonder how they manage. He must have $ from his old job. How can you travel w/ a child w/out healthcare? Of course, too, it makes me think of white privilege & how an idea like this only occurs to people from a place of privilege who become disgusted by their over-consuming lives, they buy an RV and wander aimlessly. This disgusts me too. So then I’m caught back up in it, wondering about the meaning of life. Thinking about death a lot lately — afraid of what’s to come. I distract myself like a prole, busy myself with work.

Finally it’s freezing and feels like winter — not that I want it to be this way. But with no snow on the ground. I think of the mounds of it I used to play King of the Castle on the playground. Those kind of snowy winters just don’t happen any more. I wonder how some say global warming doesn’t exist. It’s the anniversary of Roe v. Wade — today, driving to work, listening to NPR, remembering getting into a fight about abortion in the 7th grade. Thinking about women and our choices and our bodies and the choices men make for our bodies because they don’t know them.

I don’t think about you much any more. Some times I wonder why the universe stopped letting us collide. There are no more || roads. I am a road and you are a plane. You never land. We never meet. Sky, blue, out there. Untouchable.

A bad week followed by a good weekend followed by a bad day followed by a good day. Life. The way January flows into February. The way the snow falls only to melt only to fall again. I watch the ways my boys interact with one another — the unconditional love. I live off of this love these days. How his blue eyes light up when he sees his brother. How sometimes I’m in the room but not in it.

It might be winter but I am finding myself happier than years past. Full. Busy. Without you. Where does the time go? There is never enough time any more. To have all that time back from my twenties. I would give anything to have that back.

I took this picture yesterday. It made me happy. It reminded me of the past: